Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it,
She'll close, and be herself; whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth.

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune :
Thou find'st, to be too busy, is some danger.

DEATH.

The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come, when it will come.

O, our lives sweetness!

That with the pain of death we'd hourly die,

Rather than die at once.

[ocr errors]

The sleeping, and the dead,

Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood,

That fears a painted devil.

That life is better life, past fearing death,"
Than that which lives to fear.

Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life,
Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

Receive what cheer you may;
The night is long, that never finds a day.

W

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts
Imagine howling!-'tis too horrible!

The weariest, and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

The tongues of dying men

Inforce attention, like deep harmony:

Where words are scarce, they're seldom spent in

vain;

For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in

pain.

If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts, and is desir'd.

Death lies on her, like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

Duncan is in his grave

After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.

Herein fortune shews herself more kind
Than is her custom: it is still her use,

To let the wretched man out-live his wealth,
To view with hollow eye, and wrinkled brow,
An age of poverty; from which lingering penance
Of such misery doth she cut me off.

[ocr errors]

O, amiable lovely death!

Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!

Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,

And I will kiss thy detestable bones;

And ring these fingers with thy household worms; And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,

And be a carrion monster like thyself:

Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st,
And buss thee as thy wife! Mercy's love,
O, come to me!

O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honor.

If I must die,

I will encounter darkness as a bride,

And hug it in mine arms..

Yes, thou must die :

Thou art too noble to conserve a life

In base appliances.

I am a tainted wether of the flock,

Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me.

All comfort go with thee!
For none abides with me: my joy is death;
Death at whose name I oft have been afear'd,
Because I wish'd this world's eternity.

No medicine in the world can do thee good,
In thee there is not half an hour's life.

It is too late; the life of all his blood
Is touch'd corruptibly; and his pure brain
(Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house)
Doth, by the idle comments that it makes,
Foretell the ending of mortality.

About the hour of eight, (which he himself
Foretold, should be his last,) full of repentance,
Continual meditations, tears, and sorrows,

He

gave his honours to the world again,

His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.

O mighty Cæsar ! dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure?

But yesterday the word of Cæsar might

Have stood against the world: now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.

What! old acquaintance! could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!
I could have better spar'd a better man.

Ah, dear Juliet,

Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous;
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

O, my love! my

wife !

Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd: beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.

Had I but dy'd an hour before this chance,
I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There's nothing serious in mortality:

D

All is but toys: renown, and

grace,

is dead;

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

Lay her i' the earth ;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A minist'ring angel shall my sister be,
When thou liest howling.

Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grow no damned grudges; here, are no storms,
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep.

Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

My cloud of dignity,
Is held from falling with so weak a wind,
That it will quickly drop; my day is dim.

There is so hot a summer in my bosom,
That all my bowels crumble up to dust:
I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment; and against this fire
Do I shrink up.

Ah, what a sign it is of evil life,
When death's approach is seen so terrible!

Do not, for ever, with thy veiled lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:

Thou know'st, 'tis common; all, that live, must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

For further life in this world I ne'er hope;

Nor will I sue, although the king have mercies
More than I dare make faults.

« AnteriorContinuar »